Capturing Qual Insights in Real-Time: Analyzing Debate Responses with QualBoard

The Challenge

SSRS, a social science research firm in the United States, was working with its client, a large media outlet, in an ongoing study of undecided voters in swing states. This study was predominantly made up of quantitative surveys, but the client wanted to get qualitative feedback from this pool of people during the 2024 presidential debate.

The client wanted to tell the story of how these voters were responding to each candidate throughout the debate in as near to real-time as possible. It was also critical that the responses were not just positive or negative reactions but the words, sentiments, and emotional responses to what the participants were hearing. The SSRS team needed to find an innovative way to gather this data while the debate was live and share it with its client almost immediately – a big ask of any research project.

The Solution

With the goals of in-depth reaction, speed, and flexibility in mind, SSRS turned to the Sago team for a solution to this unique research challenge, and the immediate answer was Crowd Survey on QualBoard.

Crowd Survey is an activity type that allows researchers to ask qualitative questions to an entire group of participants on the fly throughout a live event. The respondents don’t see each other’s answers, but the Moderators see all the responses in real time.

This was the perfect solution for SSRS and its client, as the question structure was built ahead of time, but what the candidates said during the debate shaped the actual content of the questions. Thanks to QualBoard’s chat feature, the client could also provide the SSRS moderators with the questions they wanted to ask. This ensured that SSRS didn’t need to toggle between platforms and could simply copy and paste the question to have it launched within seconds of receiving the content.

Finally, QualBoard allowed SSRS to give members of the media outlet Moderator access to download the data themselves for quick publication.

The Results

The Crowd Survey activity on QualBoard was so efficient that the average time from the last respondent answering a question to publication on the client website was 10-15 minutes. In total, the time from the launch of the question to publication was roughly 20 minutes – an incredible achievement for a qualitative project.

The resulting story was the client’s top performer that day and was so successful, in fact, that the client asked SSRS to repeat it for the vice-presidential debate, which garnered the same outstanding results.

SSRS is now exploring other ways to leverage Crowd Survey with its clients to provide them with the richness of qualitative feedback in a quick-moving live environment.

Ready to unlock deeper insights? Connect with us today to see how QualBoard can elevate your research.

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